'Diabolical menaces': American conservatives view the New and Fair Deals, 1935-1952.

摘要

Conservative hostility toward Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal represented a central aspect of cold war political debates. Between 1948 and 1952 many Republican and Democratic politicians raised the spectre of communists-in- government to attack Roosevelt's and Truman's domestic and international programs. These arguments had at their roots opposition to the New Deal between 1935 and 1939, and these sentiments also provide a key to comprehending conservative resistance to liberal reform during the cold war. Indeed, the events of the 1930s exerted a huge impact on the 1950s. Reflecting the arguments made by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) elites during the 1930s, for example, cold war era conservatives maintained that liberal reform measures limited individual opportunities, threatened free enterprise, and brought communism (as well as communists) to the United States. The alleged nexus established in the 1930s between the New Deal and communism provided cold war era conservatives a useful political weapon to attack the Democrats, and generated growing preoccupation after World War II with the presence of communists in the Federal Government.;The evidence marshaled by conservatives to link liberal reform with communism proved less than trustworthy. Although conservative distrust dominated numerous government publications, including those of the Dies Committee of 1938 and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of 1945, opponents of the New Deal and the Fair Deal lacked concrete proof on which to base their charges. During the cold war, and especially after Truman's victory over Thomas Dewey in 1948, Republicans used such evidence to elevate their party's electoral chances in 1952. Clearly, political necessity influenced the nature of such evidence, along with the conclusions reached by the Dies Committee and HUAC.